Zoe E. Whitten's Blog, page 42

Book review: Linger by Maggie Stiefvater

I have conflicted feelings about this book, some of them still coming from out of the first book, Shiver, which I enjoyed the first half of, but hated the second half because it felt so sloppy. Linger in some ways addresses my problems with the first book, but it also creates more questions about whether my problems with the first book were genuine flaws, or intentional misinformation due to an unreliable narrator.

To fully address the story here, I need to back up to explain Shiver. In the Wolves of Mercy Falls, the idea is given that the wolves change seasonally, that cold is the trigger for change, and that at a certain age, werewolves stop shifting and just turn into wolves. From there, they live about fifteen years, and then they die from the wolf reaching their natural old age life span. BUT, suddenly for dramatic effect, all the wolves are changing and this will be their final winter as humans. Even Sam, who is a young man, is going to have this happen to him, and to me it felt extremely lazy. It felt like a fake grab at the heartstrings for added tension, and I had a hard time believing it.

My next problem was how the resolution to Grace not changing after being bitten was that she got locked in a hot car by her father, with a fever, on the hottest day of the year. This is child abuse, and when it happens in the real world, parents get arrested and lose custody of their kids. There’s no punishment of Grace’s father, and even Grace just treats this revelation as a eureka moment for helping Sam. It doesn’t really bug her that her absentee parents are vile shits. Everyone else knows this, but Grace comes across as oblivious that she’s a victim of abuse.

There were other little gripes I had, but these were the two BIG problems that left me so very dissatisfied with the first book. Yet, I’d already bought Linger, so I knew at some point I’d have to sit down and read it. And almost a year after I read the first book, I finally did read the second volume.

In the first half, Grace’s parents suddenly pretend to act like parents, with emphasis on act. Where the first book worked from the first-person POVs of Grace and Sam, Linger opens up two more POVs, Isabel Culpeper and a newly made wolf, Cole St. Clair, who is a suicidal famous rock musician who thought being a wolf would free him from feeling human.

Where I feel conflicted is that I genuinely liked the characters and dialogue for the most part. But my problems with the “why” of the story is still iffy. There’s also the small matter that Isabel’s relationship with Cole feels forced and out of character for her. From the moment they first kiss to their last conversation, their time together feels like a shoehorned aspect of the story.

However, as I neared the last 100 pages, I began to have the idea that everything written about the wolves and their disease is all a case of an unreliable narrator. And while Grace never calls out her parents on their abuse, even though it seems obvious to other characters like Rachel, Isabel, and Sam, she does at least confront them about never being home and always being dismissive of her concerns because she’s “just a child.”

This is EXACTLY how my parent treated all my problems, and it explains a lot why scene involving Grace’s parents falsely acting paternal make me fly off the deep end and lose my shit every single time. However, I’m beginning to feel that some of my anger about the way Grace deals with this lies more in how I dealt with my neglectful parents than it does with her. What I mean is, rather than see Grace’s perspective, I’m filtering her story through my own issues. So because I began confronting my parents early on about how they treated me, I kind of expected Grace to call out her parents NOW. And in truth, this may be something she can’t confront until the last book in the series. Or put another way, I may be failing to respect Grace because she doesn’t act how I would put in her place. And that’s kind of hypocritical of me.

In much the same way, it’s possible that the last book will finally reveal how much of the information we knew in the first two books about the werewolf disease was false. It’s entirely possible given what was revealed in this book, and so I can’t really say “This reveal felt stupid.” It may just be that I’d already picked up on intentional inconsistencies in Shiver not meant to be revealed until book 3.

The other matter to consider here is, “Did I enjoy reading the book?” Well, yes, I enjoyed reading Linger a LOT more than I’d enjoyed reading Shiver. The dialogue is still just as sharp, and while there is the out of character moments with Isabel and Cole, there’s also some really great lines between these two as they make little verbal jabs at each other. I still love Rachel, Grace’s insane best friend, who has a tendency to steal the scene every time she shows up.

And then there’s the fact that here we have a non-formula mainstream book where there’s still plenty of tension and emotional conflict, but no need for battles or chase scenes or bad guys, or any other artificial plot devices. I really like this, and I feel like the second book may have made the story clearer by opening up a third and fourth POV.

Ultimately, I have to set aside my gripes from the first book and say “we’ll see what happens” when it comes to the third and final book in the series, Forever. It may very well be the case that I’ll have to reassess my score on Shiver because I need to take the unreliable narrator into account.

But given how much more I enjoyed Linger, warts and all, I’m going to give it 4 stars. This isn’t the kind of werewolf story that will work for traditional horror fans, but for paranormal and YA fans looking for something that breaks the stereotypical formulas, this series could be worth your time. I can say for certain that I’ll be buying Forever soon, and I won’t be waiting nearly as long to read it as the time I delayed between Shiver and Linger.

Why I’m still reading Maggie Stiefvater…

So, last year I read Shiver by Maggie Stiefvater, and it drove me bonkers. Or, more so than normal. I loved the intro, the characters, and the basic premise. I loved that the book didn’t need a huge conflict to resolve. It was a non-formula story, and it was pushing all my happy buttons until one event was revealed near the middle of the book.

In the story, it comes out that the main character Grace was once locked in a car on the hottest day of the year, with a fever. This is a non-event in the book, and in the series so far. It’s a non-event to Grace, to her parents, and to everyone else who knows about it. This revelation was the first clunk of the story, and it drives me nuts because almost every other month, there’s a similar real life story in the news about kids locked in cars, and the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids.

Let me repeat that: the parents who do this get arrested and lose custody of their kids. In Shiver, it’s not even acknowledged as an act of abuse.

I’m sure to any reader who’s never been abused, this is no big deal. But to me, this one point has stuck in my throat, and it made me hate a lot of other moments where the writing went for an easy answer. The writing at times becomes so lazy that it made me want to throw the book. But I finished the story, and I still had Linger on my TBR shelf. Why? Because after reading 10 chapters of Shiver, I was absolutely certain I had to read the rest of the series.

So, I’m reading Linger, and I’m halfway through. I’ve got plans to get the last book in the series, Forever, and I have a copy of a new series starter, Raven Boys. While searching for Forever on Amazon, I saw Maggie has another series about faeries, and I groaned but made a note of it so I could pick it up later.

I talked on Twitter about how I must be a glutton for punishment, or that I might finally have found out what the definition of guilty pleasure is. But these jokes and easy answers don’t resolve my questions of why I don’t just throw the book away and move on. It really doesn’t explain why I’d buy every book this woman writes when I’m struggling with the second book in her first series.

I think I know now, and it’s because Maggie’s writing is a near-miss for me. I like her characters and the situations she creates for them. I like most of her dialogue, and I love that she can write a story about mystical creatures without making a fate of the world plot. (God, don’t even get me started on saving the world plots.)

But it drives me nuts how she can write about neglectful parents without showing the realistic side effects of their actions. In Linger, she’s even brought in more victims of neglectful parents and given them more realistic reactions to their abuse. So Grace’s lack of a reaction becomes even more upsetting for me.

Again, I don’t think this would matter to people who hadn’t “been there done that.” But it’s being a victim of neglect that causes this to rub me the wrong way. In Linger, at least, Grace has begun to act mildly rebellious, but even this doesn’t ring true. Worse, the book’s depiction of the parents flip-flops and makes them “very concerned” about Grace’s welfare despite the fact that they still don’t seem to give a shit enough to talk to her. They talk at her, and they’re easily as dismissive as my parents were. Their performances as neglectful parents are still there, but now suddenly they’re acting out of character with false concern. One of the bit characters has commented, “Give them a few days, and they’ll go back to forgetting they even have a daughter.” Grace’s friend can recognize neglect when she sees it. So why can’t Grace? Lazy writing.

In my teens, my parents went flipping from neglecting me to taking an active role in everything I did. Suddenly they wanted to know what I was thinking, and they weren’t nearly as dismissive of me or my problems. By then it was really too late, but I think they focused so much attention on me because they worried I might turn to crime like my little brother. I’d never been caught for my crimes, unlike Bro, who got caught and arrested for almost everything he attempted. So my parents wrongly assumed that I was the good child, and they stopped ignoring me. I suspect it was because they didn’t want me turning out “evil” like him.

Before this point, I had huge explosions and temper tantrums. No one noticed, and years later, no one seems to remember them at all, but I still had them anyway. Grace doesn’t. Grace isn’t rebellious or upset about how she’s been mistreated. Grace makes no attempts to go to the opposite end of the reaction spectrum and seek attention or approval as an overachiever, or to get help from others for her problems. She doesn’t even seem to be aware that she’s been neglected despite the hot car incident, or her friends awareness of her situation, or even the fact that her parents NEVER check up on her in her room.

This one little detail is another thing that rubs me the wrong way, because even at their most neglectful moments, my folks would come check up on me in the morning and at night before they went to sleep. I know because I used to stay awake, faking sleep until they went to bed, and then I would get up to sneak outside and stare at the stars, or I would turn on a lamp to read. I was not a day person even then, so I stayed up most nights, alone and wondering if there were other kids like me when I couldn’t find traces of them in the “golly gee willickers” portrayal of kids in most of the books I was reading.

Maggie’s writing gets damned close at times to the truth, and I think that’s why it angers me so much that she gets right up to the point of painful truth, only to back down and brush off her main character’s development.

There’s other issues I could highlight in Linger, like Isabel’s completely going out of character to kiss Cole, a total stranger to her, or how Grace’s father lays out some ridiculous concerned parent speeches on Sam, and yet, he’s the scumbag absent father who locked his daughter in a car so he could go shopping.

But then there’s the same things to like about the writing too. Everything I enjoyed about Shiver, I’m liking in Linger. By the same token, everything that drove me nuts about the lazy writing is still grating on me here. But I think I continue on because I wonder if eventually, Maggie will allow Grace to look at her parents and say, “You’re shitty people, and you don’t love me nearly as much as you claim to.” I want to know where she goes with these characters in her world, even if sometimes the direction she takes makes my eye twitch.

I want to keep reading because Maggie’s writing comes extremely close to the ring of truth I’m seeking in fiction, only to miss the target over and over. I’m still reading because despite the lazy answers given, Maggie’s doing something I wish more mainstream writers would be bold enough to try. She’s eschewing the traditional conflict formulas and telling a subtler kind of supernatural story. She’s got great characters and great dialog, and so I keep reading because maybe if this time it doesn’t work out, there’s always a chance that her writing style will mature and evolve to address these weaknesses while retaining the elements I’m loving. If and when that happens, I want to be there to see it.

So…that’s why I’m still reading Maggie Stiefvater’s books, even though my picky nature would normally have me chucking an author and moving on to someone else.

A different kind of ramble on reviews

Let me preface this by saying I am not asking for reviews at this time, and that this ramble has nothing to do with any reviews I’ve had recently. What inspired this post is a trend I’m noting among indie authors and promoters, and it’s one I can’t say I care for in the slightest. It seems like such a little thing to complain about, but it’s the addendum added to review requests, four irritating words: “if you like it.”

“Please support indie authors by reviewing their work, IF YOU LIKE IT.” Bullshit.

The whole point of a review is to tell other readers what you thought of a book, and you should feel okay giving a bad review if you didn’t like a book. You should not treat book reviews like a gladhanding session. If you can’t say anything nice about a book, then say what you didn’t like about it.

I had an indie author approach me about this and say, “But what point is there to a bad review? It will only hurt the author’s feelings and their sales.” They’re completely missing the point of what a review is meant to do. To these youg’uns, a review is all about stroking their ego and helping build hype for a book. It has nothing to do with informing other readers about the work, or what you as a reader felt while going through the story. Being polite for once, they are totally missing the point.

A bad review can still help sell copies in ways these folks cannot understand. A book with nothing but 5-star reviews begins to take a hit in credibility because we live in an age of bulk-purchased praise and sock-puppet accounts. We live in an age of gaming the systems with praise from friends and relatives. Thirty-five 5-star reviews and no complaints says to the average reader “Something funny is going on here.” Nothing but endless praise sets off warning klaxons and can actually hurt your sales. But if you have a few 2 and 3-star reviews to go along with the glowing praise, now the readers can look over both sides of the review spectrum and feel like they’re making an informed decision. That’s why you ask for honesty from readers, so that other readers can make an informed decision before they purchase your work. No reader should ever feel like they were tricked into buying your stuff, and no would-be reviewer should be made to feel like they can’t complain about not liking your writing.

Y’all know I’ve got a couple reviews that burn my tits every time I think about them. But I would never try to remove those reviews. It doesn’t matter if they send some potential readers running away. The main point of the review isn’t to help me sell books. It is for the reviewer to tell other readers what they thought of the book. I can take a good review and show it to the public as a promotional tool, but that’s a secondary function. The review isn’t for me, it’s for the readers.

It’s hard enough for indie authors to gain any sense of legitimacy to their art when publishers and their pro authors are constantly dissing us as unprofessional. The pros often game the system by buying friendly reviews, or by quote chopping ambiguous reviews to sound like glowing praise. The pros do a lot of unprofessional things to enhance the illusion of their artistic legitimacy, but these are not tactics we indies should need or want to duplicate.

So if you must ask for reviews, ask for honest reviews, good and bad. Do not ask for reviews “if you like it.” By doing this, you’re missing the point of a book review, and you’re looking just as vain and speshul snowflakey as the image the pros are projecting onto you. Reject that notion, and be willing to take some hits to your image with bad reviews. Ask for and encourage honest reviews, and don’t worry about bad reviews until you actually get one.

When you do get a bad review, deal with your pain, but let it stand and don’t try to get it removed as “bullying.” A bad review isn’t bullying. It’s just someone who didn’t like the way you told your story. So let it stand and find a way to cope with it. My way is to bitch on Twitter and drink a lot to ease the sting. So I suppose it’s a good thing that I’ve only had a few bad reviews, or this could lead to alcoholism.

Book review: Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve read anything by Steinbeck. During middle school I’d read Grapes of Wrath, and in my mid-teens, I’d read The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble Knights, his retelling of Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur. Ever since then, I’ve always meant to get back around to reading his work, but there was always something shinier and easier to read in the meantime.

But at last, I decided to sit down and read Of Mice and Men, and I’m glad I did, as it reminded me again why Steinbeck is a true artist. It’s because his work reflects the grim people of his times with no polish or attempt to hide the warts. His narration is objective and doesn’t cast judgments on people. They’re ugly on their own without him having to tell the reader “this is a bad person.” He shows the wickedness through the actions of his characters.

So it is with George and Lennie, two men traveling together because neither has anyone else they can depend upon. Lennie needs George to protect him, and George needs Lennie to keep him from becoming just another bitter bindle bum. George knows life could be better without Lennie and his constant simple-minded mistakes, but he watches out for Lennie because of a promise he made to Clara, Lennie’s deceased aunt.

After fleeing a bad situation in Weed created by Lennie, George has arranged for work on a farm, where both men will be buckers and earn enough stake to finally buy a place of their own. But right from the start, it’s clear that this farm has plenty of trouble brewing, and Lennie’s too simple not to help stir the pot of shit until it all boils over and blows up in his face.

If I have any complaints about the story, it’s the character known only as Curley’s wife. This is a minor complaint, but I feel like the narrator was too impersonal about her. Everyone else in the story has a name and a story. While Curley’s wife does get a chance to explain her side of things, it’s her lack of a name that bugs me. It’s like all the men are real people, and Curley’s wife is just a plot device that Steinbeck couldn’t assign a name to, only a role.

Setting that aside, this is strong writing with vivid descriptions and an unflinching look at hard, prejudiced people. Reading this puts me in the mood to reread Grapes of Wrath, and to also pick up East of Eden. After all, it’s not often that you see this level of ugly honesty in fiction without some attempt to excuse what’s happening. With Steinbeck, there no excuse or apology. The story is what it is. That’s why I give Of Mice and Men 4 stars, and would recommend it to anyone willing to read fiction looking at the darker side of life.

Encouraging mooching will get you nowhere fast…

So last night on a Facebook group, a woman asked about getting Neil Gaiman’s work for free, and I tried telling her politely at first that even big-time writers needed sales. I then suggested Anansi Boys as a good place to start. Said person, who went under the handle Gypsy and had a stereotypically inappropriate avatar, informed me that she wouldn’t spend money on a writer without knowing their style first. I responded that Neil doesn’t have any one writing style, so she said “then I won’t bother with him. It’s a waste of money.” So I called her a moocher, she said, “Oh Neil doesn’t really need my money.” I called her a moocher again, so she boo-hooed to others about how means I was.

The incredible part of this is, the group is run by a publisher, and the publisher’s moderator apologized to the woman for me and said I don’t understand how things work. They were of course willing to give their author’s work away because they’re struggling and need the exposure.

Oy vey. (y.y) I could get this attitude if they were a single writer just starting out, but a publisher sucking up to someone asking how to get the work of a writer not on their label, and not even suggesting that they look into buying work…it’s really sad that the publisher doesn’t feel the need to support their own writers and ask for money for the artistic efforts of the people they work with.

Look, people, exposure is financially worthless. In the history of the art world, no landlord has ever said, “I’ll take some of your exposure in lieu of your late rent.” No bill collector has ever said, “Oh, you got new exposure? Well send some of that over and we’ll discount what you owe us.” Exposure won’t keep you or your family fed, and it won’t keep you clothed. Free exposure of your art will likely lead to exposure to the elements unless you take a day job.

Moochers don’t feel obligated to make reviews. Y’all may not remember back in the day when I did give away work for free, but I kept politely reminding people, “I’m getting all this traffic, but no reviews. Please, I really need your help with just a small review somewhere.” For this repeated call for support from my free readers, I got called entitled. I got told that it’s wrong to expect support just because I gave my work for free. Giving my work away meant that I was the sucker for not charging upfront, and just the fact that these moochers read me was exposure enough.

Try to appreciate what a fatal fallacy this is to encourage free readers who aren’t willing to risk their hard earned cash. They won’t pay your authors. EVER. They’ll wait until you give the book out for free, and the author makes nothing. They won’t review the books they read either, so there’s no benefit of word of mouth advertising. There’s no exposure except for the exposure you struggle to create for yourself. It’s lose-lose. You’re still not getting paid for all your hard work, and you aren’t getting any help with promotions.

The thing that burns me up about these entitled people is, if their boss came in and said, “Hey, today why don’t you work without a paycheck on this new task just to show me if you can do it?” these people would say, “No can do, boss.” People expect and demand a fair wage for their work, and no one besides the extremely rich would think of that as an entitled attitude. Get paid for your work; simple, and everyone agrees with that.

UNLESS YOU’RE AN ARTIST. Then suddenly lots of people feel you should give your work for free and try to live on exposure. Musicians are told to give tracks out for free, and then monetize their work by touring and selling concert shirts. Some musicians are doing just that because they don’t make any money off of releasing new music. They make money from concert tickets and T-shirts.

But writers only have their words to sell. I can’t monetize my book covers because they’re the work of the artists. If I wanted to sell shirts, I would have to negotiate a different license with the artists and give them a percentage of shirt sales. So instead of writing, I’m playing accountant for my cover artists. This is not my gig, y’all. I’d rather pay the artist for the use of their image and then sell my books.

I can’t do a reading tour for fees. When writers go out and do reading tours, they pay out of pocket for the tour, and they don’t charge for tickets to have people come to them. When they do these tours, they take along print books to sell. I can’t afford to ship print books to a store and then sign them and do a reading. The price I sell my print titles at means I only make a few cents per book, and no matter how many copies I sell, it won’t cover the cost of my trip. It’s a losing proposition.

Y’all may think I’m bitching at my readers, but I’m bitching at readers who expect work for free and are willing to give nothing in return. That’s not my people. These days, my readers pay me first. So whether they review me or not is totally up to them because they already paid me and have provided real support. Some of my supporters have even sent me money JUST BECAUSE. One of my readers sent me money because I was lamenting the cost of a new DVD player. So they sent me $100 to cover the cost. They didn’t even ask for a book in return! I know, it’s shocking, amazing behavior, and I’m still stunned and overwhelmed with gratitude to that fine human being.

With the money I get from my loyal readers, I can pay my web host, or hire cover artists. With their money, I can goof off and buy video games, or I can buy books from other writers. Money really helps a lot because what my readers give me allows me to support other artists. Not just writers and cover artists, but also musicians. It’s all over win-win.

And while I’m on this topic, I’ve decided to back off of promotions during the next few months because I don’t have any new releases. It’s very stressful promoting all day, every day, and it doesn’t really bring in that many extra sales. Despite this lapse in my promotions, I’ve still got new sales for this month on Amazon, both for new releases and for my first book, The Lesser of Two Evils, and my first ebook, Blood Relations. And y’all, nothing feels better than pulling up that sales report and seeing new sales. Not new free downloads, and not new exposure. It’s new sales. It’s real monetary support, and it fucking rocks like a rock in a rocking chair at a rock concert.

This is why I only rarely ask you about reviews now, and why I don’t push it all that much. Yes, reviews and exposure would be awesome. But getting paid? Man, that feels really good. I’m making new sales month in and out, which tells me that even if I am a niche artist with no presence on the mainstream radar, I do have support for my art. This is exactly what I wasn’t getting back when all my stuff was free and I was working for just the exposure. Putting a price on my work and insisting I get paid first has brought me a fan base of people so loyal, they even give me extra money to help make ends meet. They support me with money, not “free exposure.” And I love them for their support. Not fake love, either. Real, true love.

So, by all means, go on and suck up to the moochers because you just want to be read. But don’t you expect anything positive from their presence in your social circles. They don’t buy books, they don’t do reviews, and they only take, take, take without giving anything back. They’re the vampires of the art world, and we shouldn’t be begging them to look at us like we’re so desperate for attention that we’ll even welcome people who are harmful to our development.

Book review: Generation Dead by Daniel Waters

I’m not as big a fan of zombies as I am of vampires and werewolves, so even though I bought Generation Dead…um, three years ago, it’s sat on my TBR shelf collecting dust. Hubby read it and said it was good, and even then I skipped over it. I am totally kicking myself now for this grievous mistake. Holy hell, what a fantastic book.

Basically, American teenagers are coming back from the dead, and no one knows why. One high school has become the place for these risen teens to get a fair shake at an education, and the story follows several of the students, including a pair of goth girls, Phoebe and Margi, some jocks, Adam, Thorny, and Pete, and some differently biotic teens, Tommy, Evan, Karen, and Collette.

The one thing I didn’t buy was the US-centric nature of the rising teens, but I’ll set that aside because this story explores the prejudice encountered by the new minority, and everything about this rings true. While I initially wanted to compare the situation to desegregated schools during the civil rights movement, as the story played out, I began to think it was more fitting of the struggles of modern GLBT students. These teens who die have no legal protections, and so people are abusing and even killing them with no legal repercussions. This is to some extent what school life is like for queers, where school officials will allow or encourage bullying, and will even actively work to prevent student alliances from forming and creating a normalizing environment.

The risen teens are often abandoned by their families (like many GLBT teens when they come out), and at school they are the butt of jokes or the targets of hate speech of violence (ditto). They are seen by some as curious object to be studied (ditto), and by others as a new trend to be monetized and profited off of. (another ditto) And when they are murdered violently by the living, it doesn’t make the evening news, because no one cares. (Major ditto!)

So yes, this story had a very strong ring of truth to its central theme of dealing with prejudice. It also was a nice change of pace for the use of third person perspective, where most YA uses first person. This let the narrator get inside more character’s heads, and with the exception of Pete, I loved everyone. Pete’s character is the school bully, and his prejudice is based on the weakest logic. And yet, even this has the ring of truth. Many people who have prejudices have no valid reason to hate, they just do. If pressed for a reason, their excuses would sound extremely stupid to an objective observer. Pete’s certainly does, and I felt zero sympathy for him even after his back story was elaborated on. He is simply a bully who feels he’s justified in harming others. A righteous asshole. But this makes his character disturbingly realistic, and I applaud the author for giving Pete his own chapters instead of just glossing over his role as the bad guy.

So, aside from my one very minor complaint about “only American teens are rising,” I loved everything about this story. I loved the characters, the dialogue, the plot; I loved that it didn’t sugar-coat the prejudice these kids were dealing with. And the book’s conclusion fills me with a dire need to grab the next book in the series, Kiss of Life, ASAP. Once I’ve got it shipped here, I can promise you, it won’t be collecting dust waiting to be read.

I give Generation Dead 5 stars, and I’d recommend it to fans of YA, of zombies, or of dark fantasy. No, not good enough. I’d recommend this book to anyone who likes a solidly written story that isn’t afraid to tackle a tough topic without pulling punches. It’s so, so good, and I need to stop here, or I’ll be gushing till the crack of dawn, and that would spoil the book for y’all. But do look it up, really. It’s a great story, and I can’t speak highly enough about it.

The SFWA reveals some misogyny

So, first, I want to link to this blog post from Carrie Cuinn. You should read the whole thing, but in particular, I want to quote a section taken from the 2013 SFWA’s bulletin:

The reason for Barbie’s unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the way-side is, she’s a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route but it wasn’t for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.

She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should.

This translated is, “Barbie is a good girl who keeps her mouth shut around the men-folk and doesn’t expect equality or act like a skeezy whore.” Because you know, Barbie should always be offered out as the perfect role model for girls. Unless they’re fat. Or whores.

This is from the so-called professional organization for sci-fi writers. But hey, sci-fi is really becoming progressive, and there’s really no sexism in the industry, and anyone who says there is is probably asking for too much from the men-folk. Either that or they’re attention whores.

You know, I get dinged all the time for not behaving professionally. I’ve caught so much shit lately, the word professional is becoming a trigger for my temper. And it’s precisely for things like this, where people who are paid professionals act like complete douchebags, and then shit on us indies for not “acting right.”

Here’s the thing I want to stress to y’all. The term professional is meaningless in our time. It’s applied to women, queers, and POC as a form of tone policing, even though many white men in the industry have no problems being rude, condescending, or prejudiced. There’s something being asked of minorities that the men aren’t willing to give to anyone. They ask us to respect their institutions like we’re entering the hallowed halls of their club on probationary status, but they give us no respect or recognition that we’ve already been members of the club from the very beginning.

This is another reason why I don’t want to belong to these associations, another reason why I prefer to stand on my own as an independent writer. And no, I don’t feel I should have to polish my image or stop being an angry punk. I don’t feel I should have to gloss over my being transsexual or bisexual. I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of in being loud and proud for mine and other peoples’ causes. Because it might cost me some sales from prejudiced people, and it might cost me the favor of some assholes in the boy’s clubs. But what I retain is my integrity.

I’ve never hidden my ugly side from y’all. You can read my blog and know all my past sins. I’m an open book. You know I’m not casting judgments because I’m morally superior. By now you should understand that my anger stems from the fact that these people, who tell us how to behave in public, are not capable of practicing what they preach. They talk shit about us indies and say we’ve got no professionalism. But they don’t either. The standard they hold us to, they fail to hold themselves to. They are hypocrites, and I refuse to engage them or ask for validation from people I cannot respect.

If you’re a reader who’s frequently offended by the things I say here or on Twitter, go read that blatantly misogynistic comment again, and try to square it up with your understanding of “professional behavior.” From where I stand, neither of us are professionals. But the difference is, I never claimed to be one. I claimed to be a hobby writers, an artist, and a proud punk. At least I can say I practice what I preach. Whether you love me or hate me, whether you think I’m sexist against men or not, I ain’t no hypocrite. And I’d rather stand by my worst confessions than stand with the asshole who passes along this bullshit as “advice” to women writers.

Professional? Please. These people don’t even know the meaning of the word. Which is even more pathetic because they’re writers, and knowing the definitions of words is their fucking job.

An apology to those concerned for my well being…

I tried earlier today to turn on Tweetdeck, figuring two days might be long enough for me to be calm. But no, I was ready to go off on people for nothing. I’ve got my head in a blender, and I’m dealing with some serious paranoia issues.

So that’s why the tone of my posts went all negative and hostile. I know some of you folks aren’t part of the problem, and you’re feeling genuinely concerned. Well I’m sorry, but right now I’ve having trouble seeing you for my crazy. But that’s also one reason I’m pulling back from the social sites. I know my crazy is starting to get out of control, so I need to just go sit in a corner and pet my dog.

There are others who don’t understand why I lose it, and I don’t think y’all will ever grasp how badly broken I am. It’s not just a few trust issues, and I am not just a robot who can be reprogrammed to act right. Years of abuse and head injuries have made me unstable and mean. Even my awareness of my issues cannot prevent me from slipping sometimes. A few weeks back, a little boy died after bullies gave him a concussion. I’ve taken beatings just like him for years, and head injuries like that have life-time side-effects. And this is only part of what’s wrong with me.

To the people who understand what I’m saying, I’m sorry that I have lousy self-control. And to the people who want to be offended by me, I’m sorry that you don’t understand me, and I honestly hope you never have to deal with problems like mine. I truly mean it when I say I would never wish this shit on my worst enemy.

Because I just haven’t said enough stupid shit this week…

I figure, fuck, I’m on a roll, why stop now? So I want to talk about this constantly parroted comment about the publishing industry: “This isn’t an art, it’s a business.” This is their excuse for taking only “safe bets,” their excuse for taking on only the nice polite authors who write books by the numbers like a math formula. It’s their excuse for why we no longer have any risky books without the writers going indie and proving they can make sales before any publisher will touch them.

You’re a business huh? Well you’re a business with a 1% success rate. Let’s start right there. You call yourselves the kings of content control, but you can’t pick a sure winner. In fact, people have sent you award-winning books as a test of your quality controls, and you rejected best-selling, award-winning books. Any book you do sell a million copies of is due more to dumb luck than your discerning taste, and any book you sell that is popular is usually ridiculed as popular crap.

You’re a business who mocked authors for years, and who made them follow the most asinine rules to reach you. A full decade after email came out, most of the big publishers still wouldn’t get with the times. They’re finally catching up now, when the rest of the world is moving on from email to other forms of online communication. And now that we’re all using social media, what are y’all saying? “Don’t contact us on social media. That’s so gauche.” Hey, maybe in ten years, you’ll actually figure out what the social part of social media means. But judging from your history with email, I wouldn’t hold my breath waiting for you to get a clue.

You’re a business that mocked POD and ebooks, even as you were losing talent to the indie movement. You’re a business who mocked indie writers as desperate and unable to be patient and work through your “proven system”. (Bold words from people who lose money on most of their safe bets.) You’re a business who once you noticed the trend of readers moving to e-ink, raised the prices on ebooks to punish your customers for not shoring up your paper business. You’re a business who keeps killing your own international market with region restrictions and DRM. Despite your constant unprofessional behavior, you still demand that authors kiss your ass, and you still don’t listen to anything the readers have to say about how you run your business.

But perhaps the biggest sin you commit in parroting “This is a business, not an art,” is that you blatantly ignore that your job as a business is to sell art. If you book publishers worked in the music industry, you might try to convince punk and alternative metal bands to produce easy listening, because that has more of a mainstream appeal. You’re a tone-deaf business, one incapable of changing with the times, or of listening to the authors you work with, or the readers you work for. In short, you’re a business of people who suck at their jobs, and you still want to convince writers that they should jump through your flaming hoops when you haven’t demonstrated a lick of business sense in twenty fucking years.

So, yeah, forgive me for deciding to ignore your business and just focus on selling my art by myself. I may be less professional than you in my methods, but I’m relatively sure I can’t fail any more spectacularly than you have.

On Pride, Prejudice, and Privilege…

So, I’m off of social networks for a few days until I can fake sanity, or at least civility toward my fellow netizens. I got pissed off at a lady who was talking about how her dad caught her dancing, and he told her to think how the world would see her, dancing like that. And she was so proud of this story, that he didn’t spank her or nothin’. He just shamed her for dancing, is all.

Well I lost it and said something mean, and she told me I should reread her posts, because clearly, I didn’t see how him shaming her was a good thing. And then she went off on me, saying, “I won’t bother with someone who can’t check his/her White privilege.”

I had to wonder if she used his/her as an insult to a trans person, or if she did it because she couldn’t tell my gender from my picture. My hair is kinda short these days, and my tits are kind of small. But then what pissed me off was me being given something by a black person that I couldn’t get from white people, because I’m too queer to fit in with them.

But isn’t that always the way? Somebody always has a reason for why I can’t hang with their crew.

You know how I first encountered prejudice? My mother decided to take custody of us and move us in with her into the projects in San Antonio. We got treated like shit because we were white. We got told that we were really rich, and that we were just hiding our wealth to mooch from the government. Most of the kids in our hood had TVs, even if they were small black and white sets from the pawn shop, and we didn’t even have a stereo. But even after I’d invited other kids into my house to see that we didn’t have jack shit, we were still accused of hiding our wealth.

Mom had a black boyfriend, Matthew, and we heard shit about our ho momma stealing their men. Mom WAS a ho, but Matthew was no great catch, being a junkie and an abuser. So I was deathly afraid of him unloading on me the way he unloaded on Mom. No place was safe for me, and after complaining to Mom, she hired two babysitters, sisters, and friends of one of the chicks she worked with in the bars.

And our babysitters molested us. So, right then and there, the pattern of my life was set, with physical abuse from the boys, emotional abuse and neglect from my parents and teachers, and sexual abuse from my babysitters.

I was only seven when I snapped. I could tell you the day it happened, with me slashing a kid’s chest with a kitchen knife, but I’ve already told that story before. The point is, after snapping, I began to hate how nowhere I went was safe. I had no allies, no gang to hang with. There was just me and my little brother, and even he didn’t like being around me.

Well, after a year of this shit, Bro caught a beating from the older boys, and mom chewed me out for not being there. In truth, Bro had that ass kicking coming, because he’d been taunting the black kids for ages, calling them stupid niggers and then running home to lock the door. I’d found out about this after slashing a guy’s chest to defend Bro for his dumb ass racism. The guy I cut was the one to tell me why they were chasing him, and I’d told him, “If he does it again, you can have his rotten ass.”

So they finally got a hold of him, and suddenly it was my fault. I lost it, and I told Mom it was her fault, for putting us in hell just because she thought she was fit to raise kids. I told her our father could probably do a better job of raising us. Mom got all weepy, and then she packed our bags, and away we went to Denison Texas.

There, I saw the opposite side of the prejudice spectrum, because there was only a handful of black people in Denison, and I heard from other kids how they stole all the white peoples’ stuff. Well I knew that probably wasn’t true, because the only thing a black guy ever stole from me was my girlfriend, and I was kinda relieved about that because seven is a little young to have a sexually active girlfriend.

In Denison, I saw why the black kids in the projects thought were were hiding our wealth. I saw white women wearing fancy clothes and jewelry, pulling out food stamps to pay for their pile of groceries. I saw white people collecting beneifits as cripples out riding their bikes, the fake ass walker left at home when they didn’t need to act hurt. I saw a church pastor preaching about the goodness of poverty and charity before walking out to his expensive sports car to drive back to his four-bedroom house. I saw why the blacks were so pissed, and I felt for them more than I did for the whites.

But it didn’t mean I belonged to either group. The white kids othered me for acting queer. They beat me up, either alone or in gangs. The white teachers let me be beaten, and they told me I had it coming. But I couldn’t hang with the few black kids in Denison, because they thought I was just doing it out of pity. They couldn’t see or acknowledge that I had nowhere to belong, and I just wanted to hang out with them to have ANYBODY to talk to. It wasn’t pity, it was a desperate desire to belong somewhere.

In my head, I kind of thought it was unfair. In my young mind, I always felt that if you were black and the world hated on you, you got to run home and say to your folks, “It’s not fair!” And your folks would hug you and hold you, and at least you had someone to relate to. It wasn’t like me, coming home to say “It’s not fair!” and having my folks tell me, “Well maybe it wouldn’t happen if you acted right.”

But of course, I know now that if you’re black and trans, you’re in the same boat. No, you’re in a worse boat, because then you’ve got to put up with everyone else’s prejudicial bullshit, PLUS racist white “allies” and your transphobic family. Not that dealing with abuse in my life was easier. I’m just saying, I know how it is to catch shit from both sides.

I dropped out of high school. I tried college for a month before giving up there too. I didn’t qualify for financial aid, even though I was dirt poor. I never qualified for loans, or for credit. I was at best a cling on to any social group I tried to be a part of, and I never felt right with anyone because there was always something they said to make me feel like an outsider. Sometimes it wasn’t even a comment that affected me. It might be a bit of racism, or sexism, or whatever. It might be a friend suddenly saying out of nowhere, “If I just had five minutes alone with one of those perverts, I’d beat the fuck out of them.” At one point in my teens, I thought I could trust my cousin with my thoughts on race, because he listened to rap and loved Michael Jordan. So I tried to talk, and he stopped me and said, “I’ve never had problems with niggers.” I didn’t bother trying again.

But what I’m getting at is, I don’t belong with the whites. I don’t identify with them, and I don’t understand them. They never made me feel like a part of their world. I can’t even fit in with the trans community, because I watch some of them talk about how unfairly they’re judged, only to show their own transphobia by attacking transvestites as “ugly bearded men in dresses.” It’s not okay when a cis person does it, but if we do it, it is? I don’t think so.

But when I’m trying to say something to a black person, and they don’t like what I’m saying, man, suddenly, I’m privileged. Suddenly, I have “advantages in life,” based solely on my skin color. And it doesn’t matter if the whites treated me like shit for being queer. I had it good, and I just didn’t know it until someone othered me and invalidated my opinion. AGAIN.

I think someone who is black and trans probably gets where I’m coming from, or someone black and gay. Or Hispanic and queer. But my point is, they get what it feels like to never have a “home base.” There’s no community to belong to without clinging on the edges, and then it’s us who have to bite our tongues and say nothing or risk losing that little harbor of safety. But it’s not really safe there either. It’s just less dangerous than the rest of the world.

I’m not welcome in any social circle when I’m “loud and proud.” The whites don’t like me reminding them of their oppression of everyone. The minorities love to shove me in with the whites and tell me I’ve got privileges I don’t have. I got banned from a trans support group talking about my past because the moderators said some of the other members with children didn’t feel safe around me. We’re five thousand fucking miles apart, and I’m not going to look up their kids for a date, but I still got shoved out for talking about my past.

People wonder why I lose my shit so often. Why everything seems to set me off. Why can’t I be more happy, now that I finally got mine? Why can’t I just fake a smile more and be nicer to other people? Well, maybe it’s because people around me say mean, petty shit all the time. And it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t aimed at me. I have to wonder what they’ll say about me behind my back to someone else.

Even hubby gets mad at me for always being so upset at the world. But he doesn’t hang out on social networks, and he doesn’t understand me anymore than anyone else does. He loves me, sure. But there are still times when he looks at me with shock and says, “My God, you’re crazy.” (And he’s an Atheist, so that should tell you how much I rattle him. I bring him down to invoking a God he doesn’t even believe in.)

All I ever wanted was some place to fit in, and no matter how far out on the fringes I went, I never found a group to belong to. I get people stuffing me into groups for the sake of their prejudices. I get shoved into groups to be painted with a broad brush by ignorant people from every walk of life. I tried to join the horror community, and they othered me and said I wanted a membership in NAMBLA. I tried to join the gamers, but quietly slipped away after listening to a bunch of sheltered white fucks call each other fag and bitch “in jest.” I can’t even find a home in a freaking trans community without feeling like I’m clinging on, desperate to fit in even when I know I don’t.

No one listens to me or understands why I feel so broken and lost. No one hears me or recognizes what I’m saying. Everyone hears me through the filters of their clique or tribe. So many of y’all talk about how we need more tolerance, but tolerance isn’t good enough. Tolerance is what we have now, where people act like shit to each other, but don’t outright declare war. What we need is acceptance of each other. What we need is to stop finding reasons to hate and be mad.

And that’s easier said than done. I know this, because when a black woman expressed pride over her father shaming her out of dancing using the judgement of the world, instead of asking why I saw it as a bad thing, she said I was passing judgment on her using my White privilege. It couldn’t have anything to do with my own father using the same shame to keep me trapped in my queer closet. It couldn’t be that we had something in common, the use of patriarchy to define our behavior. No, because she saw that shaming as a good thing, and if I couldn’t see it that way, it could only be because I’m white, and I don’t know nothing about systemic oppression and abuse.

In short, it was easier to hate me and dismiss me than it was to accept that my view might also be valid.

I don’t like being so upset that everything sets me off. I don’t like having to stay offline because the social networks are my only connection to the outside world. But sometimes, I can’t deal with y’all people. I can’t watch you complain about every little thing, or brag about something you think is good, and it’s really sad. I hate feeling like I want to go to war with the whole world.

I’m just tired. I’m on the other side of the planet, and y’all can’t touch me with your fists anymore. But sometimes your words hit with almost the same impact. You call me tranny, whore, queer, pervert, monster, pedophile; I’m a piece of shit, or a screeching bitch, and sometimes, I’m a privileged white.

I don’t belong anywhere. On a planet of 7 billion people, I have no one to relate to. I keep screaming out, hoping I’ll find someone who gets me and who loves me and will let me love them in return. Sometimes I feel like hubby gets me, and he’s the one person I need. But sometimes, he shouts at me, and I realize, he doesn’t really get me either.

I hate being an alien. I hate that I never have a group to belong to, not even to the groups I get shoved into by others. When I die, if there’s an afterlife, I’m going to seek out God and ask him point blank, “What was the point of all that? You had me beaten, raped, neglected, and mocked, and not once did you ever give me a place to feel right in my own skin. So what was the point of putting me through hell and never granting me a sanctuary?”

And maybe there won’t be an answer. I think that’s what upsets me the most. That in all this time I’ve been here, people won’t have learned anything about acceptance. They’ll still be hating each other right up to the point that the planet becomes toxic under their feet and kills everyone all at once. There will always be an excuse to hate each other, a “good reason” to heap abuse on one another. There will never come a time when a queer kid like me can grow up without fear, knowing equality and having someplace to belong. God help that queer kid if they’re white, because even the other minorities will tell them “You just don’t know how good you’ve got it, cracker.”

I want to dream of a safe world for that child. But sometimes, I get tired of dealing with the reality that the next generation is just as fucked from the word go as I was.

But please, go on and tell me how I don’t know nothing about your plight. Go on and tell me how hard you’ve got it. After all, I can always use more stories like yours in my fiction. You know, the stories I can’t sell to anyone cause they don’t read about homos and trannies.